Competing algorithms...

[Magnus L. Hetland]

Yay!

I have managed to get the course on algorithms here at the university
to use Python as its language!

Now, I have to find some cool uses for it :) I am planning on setting
up some programming competitions as a part of the course; i.e.
students send their algorithms (in Python) to a (rexec-) server which
benchmarks them and ranks them. So... Have you got any good ideas for
fair benchmarking?

The evaluation should preferrably be done automatically, so the only
thing I can think of is straight benchmarking baset on clocking and
test cases... But is this a good and fair measure of how good the
algorithm is? (Of course, a O(n) algorithm would probably out-perform
an O(n^2) algorithm...)

It might also be possible to do manual evaluation of the best ones, or
something - or to have a separate prize for beautiful programs...
Anything is possible...

eagerly-awaiting-several-exciting-suggestions-ly y'rs

 -M

--

  Magnus
  Lie
  Hetland        http://arcadia.laiv.org <arcadia at laiv.org>